By: Blonde One

As well as being a mission for showing off navigation, teamwork and camp skills, a DofE expedition is also supposed to be fun. Each expedition, at all three levels, must have an activity aim. This aim is to be done at the various checkpoints throughout the whole trip: two days for Bronze, three for Silver and four for Gold. I have seen many styles of activity aim throughout the years that I’ve been involved and I have witnessed how an aim can distract participants from sore shoulders, aching feet and wet clothing. There are all sorts of aims uploaded to YouTube but here’s a few of the best ones I’ve seen with my own groups:

  1. Doing 20 different sports. This required the Gold team to carry a cricket set, tennis ball and rugby ball for the entirety of the four day expedition. I took pity on them and allowed yoga as a sport!
  2. Finding things in nature to represent the 26 letters of the alphabet. They got quite creative with x and z.
  3. Where’s Wally? Photos were taken of ‘Wally’ hiding behind trees, hedges and trig points, complete with stripy hat, jumper and black rimmed glasses.
  4. A study of erosion caused by water. This also helped with the teams’ GCSE Geography.
  5. Finding as many things with the same initial letter as your own name.
  6. Taking selfies with animals. This team did really well and even got a butterfly in the picture. Most of the animals were camera shy and way off in the back ground but some Dartmoor ponies were rather more inquisitive and were right at the front.
  7. An investigation into land use: tourism, industrial, residential.
  8. A ball skill tournament. This included an egg (tennis ball) and spork race and a ‘throw the ball as far as you can for the dog’ competition.
  9. A study of the churches along the way.
  10. A snakes and ladders style board game created with Sharpie pens on a silver foil blanket. The counters were things found on the trip. The penalties were along the lines of ‘locked gate, go back four spaces’. The rewards were: ‘share sweets with team, move on three spaces’. The game was played at the end of the trip with the staff to form their final presentation.

 

Teenagers can be very creative can’t they?